Faster Wi-Fi is here, but it’s off to a slow start

Wi-Fi is starting to go through a generational change, the kind of big upgrade that only happens once every five years or so. But while this faster new version of Wi-Fi has shown up inside plenty of routersacross the CES show floor this week, it’s had a poor showing in the one place that really matters: our actual computing devices.

Only a handful of laptops — and no smartphones, tablets, smart home devices, PCs, or other gadgets that we’ve seen — have been announced this week with support for the new generation of Wi-Fi. That means that, even though you can go out to the store today and buy a next-gen Wi-Fi router, very few devices can actually take advantage of its faster speeds.